Seats on the cheap at Etihad
At the Docklands, which has proved financially troublesome for some AFL clubs, adults will be charged $20 for seats that would usually cost $60.70.
The same seats for juniors will cost just $6 a saving of $15 in an offer that North Melbourne is circulating to members in a bid to boost the attendance to 18,000.
The AFL is also trialling what it terms a ''variable dynamic pricing strategy'' a concept used to great effect in American sport for the Melbourne Western Bulldogs game next Saturday at the MCG.
A similar initiative was tried for Carlton's match against Port Adelaide at Etihad Stadium in round eight, with Blues chief executive Greg Swann saying on Friday about 5000 tickets were, in his words, ''given away''.
The crowd for that game was 29,936 only slightly higher than the 29,696 who attended in round 19, 2008, when the clubs last played at the venue.
''We tracked the 5000 cheap tickets and about half of them turned up, so that was OK, we got an extra couple of thousand [people],'' Swann said.
''Any time you can attract more people it's a good thing. I think it's something the AFL should do more of, to be honest, variable pricing. I think it's good.
''For a game like North GWS, you should be able to buy the best seat at level two on the wing because there's no one there [if the usually more expensive seats aren't sold]. Hopefully you get those people to go back there again. That's the key.''
Low attendances have been an issue for GWS in its second year. Winless at the mid season mark, the Giants have attracted fewer than 8000 spectators to five games this year. Last week against Port Adelaide at Skoda Stadium, only 6601 attended.
The low point for attendance this year was 5830 for the match against Adelaide, also at Skoda.
The challenge to break even financially for games at Docklands has been an ongoing concern for North Melbourne and other fellow tenants.
Stadium boss Paul Sergeant acknowledged the issue at the start of the season and flagged his interest in driving initiatives to improve collaboration between the venue, clubs and AFL, to benefit cheap jerseys fans.
North Melbourne media boss Heath O'Loughlin said the club was pleased with the arrangements for the clash against the Giants and the AFL, stadium and club would absorb the cost of discounting the tickets.
The AFL conducted its first trial http://www.cheapjerseys11.com/ of selling cheap seats online two years ago in a bid to attract first time, or infrequent, fans to games. While just 274 additional tickets were bought through a last minute sales website for a St Kilda Geelong clash, AFL commercial operations manager Darren Birch said the experiment was designed to hit a new audience.
The AFL also advertised a two for one ticket deal for a Richmond Melbourne match in 2011 on a Facebook ticket sales page. A Collingwood North match was the third game in that trial.
''It's not something we think will damage the brand,'' Birch said at the time. ''It's a pilot, it's very controlled, it's for a limited time frame we generally don't do discounted ticketing in a big way, but in terms of competing on the entertainment platform, we would be remiss in not trialling, or looking at this as an avenue.''.